Opening Day!

April is here at last! Whatever it is that March is going out as, it's finally gone.

You thought it was spring? April fools!

April 1 brings us many things. It brings a lot of April Fools' Day jokes of course. For some reason it brings several inches of new snow to my yard—will it never end? But most importantly, it brings Opening Day.

I am referring to the first day of the Major League Baseball season. I have always kind of liked baseball. As a kid, my friends and I all had balls, bats and gloves. There was a big empty lot behind the house of one of my friends, and from spring to fall we would be out there playing. Not the kind of organized game that seems to be the only way the kids I know play today, but rather the kind of neighborhood game played by a handful of kids, involving imaginary runners and other bits of improvisation. I sometimes thought about playing little league ball, but my mother wouldn't hear of it, saying that the little league parents were all a bunch of fanatical nuts.

From the time I was about five until the age of thirteen, I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. The East Bay, to be precise. So it was only natural, I guess, that when watching baseball my friends and I all followed the Oakland A's. This was in the late 1960's and early 1970's, which was a pretty exciting time to be an A's fan. There was a certain aura that surrounded the team during that era, partly because of their success on the field during the first half of the 1970's (such as World Series wins 1972–1974), but also because of the colorful image that their equally colorful owner, Charlie O. Finley, built up around the team.

Back When Life Was Simpler

I went to a few games a year during that period. It was pretty exciting as a kid to go to the Oakland Coliseum to see a live game. I think one of the first games I ever went to was a bat day ca. 1970 or 1971, at which I got a free bat that bore the signature of Rick Monday, who hit a grand slam during that very game; a very big deal at the age of nine or ten. That bat somehow ended up in my mother's garage and my son now has it. I wonder if bat day still exists? These days I imagine there would be significant legal concerns about filling the stands with thousands of potential weapons.

But these happy times were not to last forever… For one thing, I just got older and had other things on my mind. But more significantly, I watched as the amazing team I had followed for so many years disintegrated, as some of the players went on to other teams who paid them more, and others were sold off by Charlie Finley to other teams. It became pretty clear to me that this was all just a business, and that any romantic notions about these guys being a team who were always there for each other were a kind of youthful fantasy. Greatly disillusioned, I lost interest in not only baseball, but in professional sports in general for a very long time.

Fast-forward about 25 years, and here I am moving from Germany, where baseball is largely unknown, to the Boston area. Everywhere I look I see someone wearing a cap with a script "B" on it, and all anyone seems to be talking about is the latest exploits of "Nomah" (AKA star hitter Nomar Garciaparra) and "Manny being Manny", whatever that means. From April to September, the world seems to revolve around the Red Sox and their seemingly eternal quest to escape "the curse of the Bambino". People speak of Bill Buckner's error in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series in the same tones of anger, sadness and resignation in which they might speak of the unexpected death of a close friend.


A Famous Local Landmark (Since Retired)


At first I looked on all this with a certain air of bemused detachment. And then at some point I watched a game or two on TV, I think during the 2004 season as it started to look like the Red Sox would make it at least as far as the playoffs and the local fans, i.e., about 98% of the local population, were starting to show that peculiar mixture of excitement tinged with an undercurrent of an expectation of ultimate defeat that was so characteristic of Red Sox fans at the time. But then the unthinkable happened as the Red Sox went on to defeat the much-hated New York Yankees in the seventh game of the American League Championship Series after having lost the first three games. And then something even more unthinkable happened as they went on to win the World Series for the first time since 1918. And I think I watched pretty much every one of those games.

So I guess I've kind of made my peace with professional baseball. I find that I enjoy watching the games more than I might have been willing to admit previously, although I rarely watch an entire game from start to finish; usually I'll turn it on in the fifth or sixth inning and watch as long as there's still some suspense as to who's going to win. I like the fact that the season is so long; with over 160 games to be played over six long months, a team can't get into the post-season by getting lucky a few times, it has to be consistently good throughout the whole season. It's a marathon and not a sprint.

My Favorite Wife, being of the German persuasion and having grown up without any connection to baseball, will occasionally watch a game with me on TV, but still finds it utterly baffling. To me, it seems really straightforward: each team gets a turn each at being on offense or defense over a cycle of nine innings; the team on offense can keep batting until they have three outs; when batting, the objective is to hit the ball and them run around the bases; the pitcher throws the ball, and each throw can be a ball or a strike; it's a ball if it's thrown outside the strike zone, unless the batter swings at it, in which case it's a strike if he misses, or if he hits it foul (but only the first two foul balls count as strikes), but it's also a strike if it's in the strike zone even if he doesn't swing and, oh, never mind… I guess it is sort of complicated. Unlike MFW's beloved game of soccer, in which a bunch of guys try to kick a ball into a net, the end. What's so exciting about that?

And hardcore fans like to make baseball even more complicated by following the stats. I don't think there are any sports fans anywhere that are as numbers- and trivia-obsessed as hardcore baseball fans. Every game I hear the announcers saying things like, "You know, Bill, that hit by Ortiz is the first time since 1993 that a designated hitter got a double off a fastball thrown by a left-handed pitcher whose mother's name is Martha on a Tuesday during a new moon." Where do they come up with this stuff? Who cares? I just want to see if the guy can hit the ball.

I've only been to one live game since returning to the US. It was my first and only game at Fenway Park. Fenway is a fun place to watch a ball game because it's just so small. Seeing a game there is sort of like watching your favorite band perform in a small club instead of a huge stadium. But the downside of that is that it's also really expensive, at least by my standards; even the "cheap" seats typically go for well above $100, and I'm just not willing to drop five or six hundred dollars for an afternoon's entertainment with the family. Somehow that just seems frivolous and irresponsible (in other words I'm a cheapskate, as my children will explain it). The one game I went to was at the invitation of a sales guy at work who happened to be a college buddy of a major figure in the Red Sox organization and was able to periodically borrow that guy's season tickets. That one time we went he asked me when the last time was that I had been to a major league ball game, and it occurred to me that it was probably when my host was still filling his diapers.

Where Boston Goes to Worship

As for the Red Sox on opening day: they lost their first game 9-5 to the Texas Rangers. Not an auspicious start. Oh well, at least we have, what, another 161 to go?

Out Like… a Lion?

I have been pining for spring after all the cold weather and snow we had this winter. With the coming of March, things have started to take a turn for the better. We had some heavy rainstorms around the beginning of the month, but also some dry stretches with temperatures in the 40's and 50's (F). I've watched with pleasure as the giant piles of snow in my backyard and throughout the neighborhood have gradually disappeared until there is very little left.


Even a Very Faint Hint of Green Lawn


The seedlings I planted a couple of weeks ago are all pretty much up and growing too. Another sign that spring is coming! This weekend I'll plant a bunch more.

Progress

This past Sunday, March 20 was the equinox, the official beginning of spring (equinox… I've always really liked the sound of that word for some reason… equinox… equinox… equinox…). It wasn't exactly a warm day, mid-40's maybe, but it was sunny and dry. And then what did I wake up to the next morning? A snowstorm! Massachusetts, so cruel art thou. They say that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Here it comes in like a lion and goes out like a very slightly smaller lion.


Supposedly There's A Lamb In There Somewhere



Seeds of Hope

Rising temperatures and thawing snow are clear signs that against all odds, spring may actually come to Massachusetts this year. But long before that happens, even as winter is only just getting seriously underway, there is another sign of a coming spring. Every January, just after the first of the year, my mailbox becomes clogged with seed catalogs.

I buy more or less the same stuff from the same three suppliers every year. I get tomatoes and peppers from a supplier that specializes in those things, I get lettuce and other greens from a second supplier, and everything else from a third. Obviously they share their mailing lists with other suppliers, because I always end up with catalogs from over a dozen others.

Looking out at my garden from my bedroom window at that time of year, spring still seems a long way off. All I see is a sea of white. This year, with record snowfall, that sea was deeper than ever, reaching almost to the top of the garden fence, which stands a little over four feet high.


2/2/11: I hope the groundhog was right…


Now that we are into March, and we've had some warmer days and a bunch of rain, the snow is starting to disappear, but it still looks pretty dreary outside. All the rain we've gotten in the last few days has melted away a lot of snow, but it doesn't all drain away quickly, so the ground in my back yard has a soggy, squishy character.


3/6/11: I can actually see the ground now



3/6/11: A little sun, and the glacier is receding further

With the snow gone I can also see all of the dead plant material, stakes and whatnot that I promise myself I will clear away every fall before the snow comes, but somehow never get around to doing. I will end up doing it before I plant in the late spring. I don't know that it really matters, objectively speaking, but it might be nice to start the gardening season with everything already looking nice and tidy.

But for now the gardening work is happening indoors. The seeds I ordered recently arrived, so on the weekend I started planting things that I have learned from experience to start planting about now: eggplant, peppers and cabbages. I get out the starter trays and fill the little compartments in the trays with moistend sterile seed starter mix. Then, using my trusty zircon-encrusted tweezers, I carefully poke one seed into each little compartment.


Mühsam ernährt sich das Eichhörnchen

The whole thing is a pretty tedious business and I tend to sort of space out as I'm doing it, especially if someone happens to come up and start talking to me while I'm in the middle of it. Hmm, did I just put a seed into that compartment, or did I put it in the other one? Yes? No? Guess I'll put another one in to be safe. Wait, did I already put two in there? And on and on… It's hard work, but somebody has to do it. I just try to think of it as a zen meditation sort of thing, something that will help me be at one with myself (whatever that means), but I'm still glad when it's done.

After the trays are filled I put them on my seed starting bench on electric mats that are supposed to keep them warm enough for the seeds to germinate. My seed starting bench is one of the many things I've whipped together quickly out of a bunch of scrap lumber for temporary use, but has then lasted for years and years afterward. My woodworking hobby and general deep-seated compulsion to be constantly building something or other ensures that there are always plenty of materials lying around from which something at least marginally useful can be constructed.

This year My Favorite Wife has decreed that this elegant piece of fine furniture is no longer welcome in the dining room, so I've found a spot for it in the garage. This will be an interesting experiment because this time of year the unheated garage still has an average temperature of about 45° F, so I am hoping that the heating mat will work well enough for the peppers and eggplant, which like warm soil, to germinate and not just rot in the damp soil.



Banished to the Garage



For the cabbages at least I know it's working, since the first seedlings (red and white varieties!) are sprouting, three days after I planted them. I find this tremendously exciting. But then I am not like you.



Newborn baby cabbages! Look closely. Aren't they darling?



Enough Already!

This winter has just gone on way too long. But at last things are looking up here in this howling wilderness to which Providence hath brought us. The temperature actually stayed above freezing over the entire period of the last 24 hours, which I think is the first time we've had that so far this year.

We had way more snow this year than usual, somewhere between 70 and 80 inches (or between about 175-200 cm for you overseas readers). The average in this area is around 22 inches. Most of that fell during a four-week period in January. Usually we have a weather phenomenon called the "January thaw", a period of around a week or so when the temperature gets up above freezing during the day and a fair amount of the snow that's accumulated up to that point melts away before it turns cold and snowy again. This year we didn't have that, though, so between the substantial snowfall and the consistently cold temperatures, we ended up with huge piles of snow everywhere that nobody quite knew what to do with.

Although the major roads were mostly free, driving in residential neighborhoods became something of a challenge because the plows can only pile it up to a certain height. The usable surface in my own neighborhood got narrower and narrower until in most places it was only barely possible for two cars to pass each other.

Pass Me If You Can

The sidewalks weren't much better. I live in a neighborhood in which most (though unfortunately not all) of the residents are pretty good about clearing the sidewalks in front of their houses. It's hard to get every last bit of it off with a shovel or snowblower, especially if you are clearing it after people have walked on it and compacted it onto the surface of the sidewalk. Most of the sidewalks on our street are asphalt, so if you get most of it off, when the sun comes out subsequently, even on a cold day it will warm the asphalt to the point where most of what remains will melt and evaporate. But there are still many stretches where the snow is repeatedly warmed only enough to become liquid and then freezes again, turning some stretches of sidewalk into a sheet of ice. So there you get to choose whether you want to risk falling on the ice, or whether you would prefer to walk in the street and instead risk getting hit by some unobservant motorist.



Take Your Chances

The more heavily traveled roads in the city were generally cleared to their full width, which in some cases meant bringing in construction equipment to load snow onto dumptrucks and cart it away. Where they took it I don't know. There were discussions about dumping at least some of it into the ocean; usually that's prohibited because the snow cleared from roads and parking lots tends to be full of road salt, motor oil and all manner of other flotsam and jetsam, but I think this year there may have been some exceptions made. I wrote previously about how the snow looks nice at first, but especially in the more heavily-traveled areas soon turns into grey-black piles that you get pretty tired of looking at. Well, this year we've been getting to enjoy that phenomenon even longer than usual. Even on those days when the sun comes out it's kind of depressing to walk or drive through that landscape.

Ugly Grey Gunk

Son of Ugly Grey Gunk

Return of the Son of Ugly Grey Gunk

As the snow recedes, it's exposing some of the most enormous potholes I've ever seen. I'm talking over a foot wide and 6–8 inches deep in some cases, and that's no exaggeration. I also wrote previously about how the winter freeze-thaw cycle, paired with the action of the snowplows, tends to wreck the road surfaces around here, but this year it's extreme. I'm guessing it's because there were a lot more plows out plowing a lot more snow than usual this year. But whatever the reason, driving on any of the main roads in this town in the last couple of weeks has been a pretty exciting game of pothole slalom every time.

At least the end is in sight. To measure the approach of spring I need look no further than the end of my driveway. The pile of snow that had accumulated from the series of storms we had in January is slowly receding. Another month and maybe it'll be gone…

February 2: Six Feet High

February 15: I'm Melting!

  

March 6: Land in Sight!



Disqualified

I just read a couple of stories about perpetual Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's appearance on The Steve Malzberg Show on WOR, New York. I have never listened to this show before, but from the little I did listen to, I gather that Steve Malzberg is just another right-wing Rush-Limbaugh-wannabe talk radio host.

I used to think of Huckabee as a kind of affable middle-of-the-road Republican who was at least worth listening to even if I might not agree with him. That was before he became a host on Fox "News", and also before a 2008 presidential debate in which he raised his hand in response to the moderator's question as to which candidates do not believe in evolution. But as far as I'm concerned, he's now completely disqualified himself from any consideration as a presidential candidate.

Listen here to what he had to say when goaded by Mr. Malzberg to discuss President Obama's US citizenship or purported lack thereof. You will find that discussion starting at minute 13:20 and ending at minute 15:20. (You are of course welcome to listen to the entire recording but I assume no responsibility for the nausea that you are likely to experience as a result.)

Now, I will concede to you that Huckabee does not take the bait when Malzberg tries to get him to say that Obama wasn't born in the US. But Huckabee does say pretty clearly (twice) that Obama grew up in Kenya, and did so under the influence of his Kenyan father and his Kenyan grandfather, and that this shaped certain aspects of his worldview. The truth, of course, is that Obama never lived in Kenya and, according to his autobiography, had only the most fleeting contact with his absentee father when he was ten years old.

Because I said so, that's why!!

Huckabee has since sought to characterize his statements as "a simple slip of the tongue", having said "Kenya" when he met to say "Indonesia". This is pretty laughable. Listen to the recording of the conversation. Substituting "Indonesia" for "Kenya" would render his statements completely incoherent. He said "Kenya" because he meant "Kenya". At best he was caught out discussing a topic which he in fact knew very little about. At worst he was taking a cue from his demagogue host to pander to what he knew would be a sympathetic audience that is more receptive to slogans than actual information. Either way he has been caught red-handed manufacturing "facts" and now he is just trying to look a little less stupid (and thereby digging the hole a little deeper). Is this guy presidential material? You tell me.

Taxi-ing My Patience

We've been a one-car family pretty much forever. Most of the driving is done by My Favorite Wife, who has multiple teaching and tutoring jobs that keep her constantly on the road. My own driving is mostly confined to the weekends, since during the week I'm either working out of my home office or traveling longer distances using various forms of client- or employer-funded transportation such as planes, trains and taxis, so having a second car always seemed like kind of an unnecessary luxury. Sure, it would be nice, because there are times when MFW needs to be in one place that's only accessible by car at the same time that I or one of the kids need to drive somewhere else entirely, but we've generally managed to live with that inconvenience.

At the same time, the family minivan is over ten years old now, and it's questionable how much longer it's going to last. We seem to be spending money on one costly repair after another, and I worry about MFW getting stuck on the road somewhere. So recently we bought a new car (actually the first new car I've ever owned; even with rising income I've still mostly bought late-model used cars). We still have the van, so for the first time ever we are a two-car family. Wow, what a difference! I am overwhelmed by convenience.

The best thing is this: When I travel for business, I can now drive the van to the airport or the Amtrak station and leave it parked there while I'm gone, which previously wasn't an option, because MFW needed it. But more importantly: I can drive home in my own car and don't have to take a taxi.

There are few things I dread more than the taxi ride home from Logan Airport. When I step off a flight at 10 PM on a Friday night I just want to go home. Right away. But instead I have to go stand in line at the taxi stand with a couple dozen other cranky travelers and wonder when it will be my turn. Once in the cab, I will have to explain to some guy who barely speaks English where I want to go, and remain alert throughout the trip to ensure that we actually end up there. I'm accustomed to dialogues like this one:

Me:	See that street up there on the right? You need to turn onto that one.
Driver:	(Ignores me as he continues the cell phone conversation that he's been carrying on in some obscure language ever since we left the airport.)
Me:	(More loudly this time) Hello?!
Driver:	(Temporarily pausing his conversation): Wha?
Me:	(Speaking slowly) I want you to turn right onto the next street.
Driver:	Here right? (Yanks wheel suddenly to the right, sending us careening toward the curb.)
Me:	NO! At that street that's coming up!
Driver:	Turn right?
Me:	Yes! See where that car ahead of us just turned?
Driver:	Yes.
Me:	You need to turn there.
Driver:	OK. (Continues on a trajectory that implies we will not be turning right any time this evening.)
Me:	Here! Here! Turn right HERE!
Driver:	(Hits the brakes and makes a screeching right turn into the street.) OK.

The trip to the airport doesn't bother me at all, I guess because for that trip the driver knows exactly how to get there and there's not much to be explained beyond which terminal I want to go to. I really don't mind riding in taxis in general. I have had the opportunity to do it in many parts of the world. Here are a few recollections of some of those experiences.

I've had mixed experiences with New York City taxis. I periodically go there on business and take the subway where possible, since most of the places I need to go are near a station and it's comparatively convenient. Occasionally I take a taxi, though, especially when I have to travel between two points that would require me to change multiple times or walk a very long way from the last station to my final destination. I once heard Jerry Seinfeld say in one of his routines that apparently the only thing you need to get an NYC taxi license is a face, and I can vouch for that. During the day the traffic limits the speed at which you can drive through the streets of Manhattan, but at night, when the traffic dies down, the excitement starts as soon as you step into a cab.



Your Life Is In My Hands

I rarely fly into New York, since I can take Amtrak from where I live into Penn Station in the heart of Manhattan. But there was a time when I worked for a big bank in Frankfurt, Germany and had to go to NYC about every two or three months. MFW worried and worried about me flying that transatlantic route, but I always told her that it was nothing to worry about; the only really dangerous part of the trip was the cab ride from JFK into the heart of the city, and I wasn't kidding about that. Most of the drivers drove like maniacs, passing other cars and weaving in and out of lanes like we were competing in the Daytona 500. Most of them were peculiar characters of one kind or another.

There was the guy who was barely tall enough to see over the dashboard but drove with his seat tilted way back, one hand on the wheel, while with the other hand he squeezed one of those spring-loaded hand exercisers through the entire ride. There was the greasy guy with the generic Eastern European accent who argued with me for fifteen minutes at my destination that there was some exorbitant "special tip" included in the price. There was the clueless guy who, when I said I needed to go to the Sheraton at the corner of 7th Ave. and 52nd St. asked, "Where's that?" (For an NYC cab driver this should be about as hard to find as his left knee.)

The strangest driver I remember was the African guy who went shooting up the expressway from JFK toward Manhattan and then a few minutes later suddenly veered off it into the parking lot of a gas station/convenience store. As he jumped out of the car, he said something that sounded like, "I need some water for my eyes," but I wasn't sure whether that was what I had heard. A few minutes later he got back in the car with a bottle of cold water. He unscrewed the cap, put the open mouth of the bottle over one eye, and then tilted his head way back, sort of like he was trying to drink through his eyeball. He repeated the procedure with his other eye, then a few more times with each eye as I sat there dumbfounded. Finally he screwed the cap back onto the bottle and as we raced back onto the expressway he explained sort of matter-of-factly, "It helps me stay awake when I'm driving."

Living and traveling in Germany for many years, I had the opportunity to take a lot of taxis there. The only way I can think of to describe them is that they are mostly mid-sized Mercedes cars that are clean, efficient, reliable and very dull. Almost everywhere I've been, taxis are painted in bold colors, probably so you can spot them easily on the street, but German taxis are always a nondescript beige color.

Reliable, Comfortable and Dull

I had a few opportunities to take taxis during a trip to Budapest, Hungary in the early 1990's. I don't remember much about it other than that they were little boxy things, no doubt one of those licensed Fiat models that were built in Poland or maybe there in Hungary, and it took us forever to get anywhere because traffic was in a permanent state of gridlock. On top of that I think the drivers took us foreigners way out of the way to collect a higher fare, because it seemed like we took incredibly roundabout routes to get to destinations that looked more or less like a straight shot on the tourist street map I got in the hotel.

The same Fiat-derived car model was the vehicle of choice for taxi services in Barcelona, Spain, where I lived for a few months in the late 1980's. I didn't ride in them often, because I could usually take the subway to wherever I was going. So my main memory of them is just the swarms and swarms of them that seemed to be everywhere I looked. The apartment I stayed in looked out onto the Avinguda Diagonal, a wide avenue that cuts diagonally through the entire city. It seemed like no matter what time of day I would look out onto it, it was one honking mass of black and yellow.

The Horn is the Most Important Part

One of the more bizarre business trips I went on ca. 1991 took me sort of by accident to Tokyo (a long story for another time). There were a couple of things that stood out about the Tokyo taxis, at least as they existed at the time. One of the stranger things about them was the driver-controlled passenger door, which the driver opens for you as he pulls up at the curb to pick you up and then again when you reach your destination. The drivers were always very dressed up, right down to the detail of their white cotton gloves. I don't think any of them spoke English (but then neither do the ones in New York or Boston, so I'm accustomed to that) so it was helpful that for most of my stay there I was working with a colleague from the local office of the company I worked for at the time. But even he had his challenges to ensure that we got to our destination.

Apparently Tokyo has a weird address system that does not include names for streets. Each time we were going somewhere, someone at our destination would fax a map to my colleague; before we set off in our taxi, he and the driver would stand puzzling over this map for ten minutes or so until they figured out how to get there. I don't know how they got along before fax machines. I imagine that GPS systems are considered to be a must-have item for any driver there nowadays.

Hop In, Charlie-San!

My favorite place to take a taxi ride is probably London. The London cabs are big boxy things that have plenty of room for the passengers to stretch out in. The drivers have an amazing knowledge of the peculiar, randomly winding streets of the city and surroundings; I am told that they have to take an examination to prove this before receiving a taxi license. The ones I've driven with were all friendly and courteous. The driver I remember most is the one who had a large selection of the day's newspapers neatly arranged on the little shelf behind the passenger seat and urged me to take one. I can't read while driving because it makes me want to throw up all over everything, which is not something my fellow passengers enjoy, but it was a nice touch anyway.



Feels Like Empire

 If London is my favorite place to ride in a cab, my absolute least favorite place to take a taxi ride is Hoboken, New Jersey. All of the taxis I've ridden in in New Jersey are kind of strange insofar as unlike any other place I've been, they don't have meters; instead, the driver just tells you how much the fare is. I've learned that it's a good idea to ask before you start your trip rather than to wait to find out when you reach your destination. Supposedly there is some sort of government-regulated rate book that specifies the fare between any two points, but I still seem to find myself paying a slightly different fare every time I travel between the same two points in a New Jersey taxi.

A couple of years ago I was working in Hoboken and usually staying in a small hotel in Secaucus, NJ, which is as unpleasant a place as the name suggests, but it turned out to be the place with the quickest commute between hotel and office. To get home in the evening I started out by walking a block or so to the taxi stand that was next to the train station. The trip to my hotel from there would cost anywhere from $30 to $45. The drivers at the high end of this range were not impressed when told that I had made the same trip 24 hours earlier for $10 less. They just referred me to "the rate book", a mysterious artifact that I imagine to be guarded by an army of ninja warriors in a secret location because as far as I can tell nobody has ever actually seen it.

But apart from the fact that I was getting reimbursed, I was happy to pay whatever it cost because at this taxi stand, which was pretty much the only place in the area where you could easily find a taxi, you don't choose a taxi, it chooses you. You line up at the taxi stand and a cab slowly cruises down the line; the driver points at each potential passenger, who names his or her destination and the driver either motions for that person to jump in, or else just points to the next person in line. It's not just your destination that matters, it also matters whether your destination is compatible with that of the other passengers. I say "other passengers" because in all likelihood you will be one of three or four total strangers crammed in next to each other, each of whom is going to a different place and each of whom will pay a separate fare. Since my destination was usually the furthest from the station, I always got to sit in the cab while everyone else was getting dropped off somewhere else.


You Are Not Worthy

Eventually I got to know my way around and found a cheaper and more convenient ride with a company from Secaucus that would take me to the office in the morning and then come pick me up in the evening. It had the reassuring name of "Goodfellas Taxi".

One More from the Throat

I picture the inside of my brain as looking a lot like my grandmother's basement did when I was a kid: there's some useful stuff in there, but it's also a kind of last stop for all kinds of weird odds and ends accumulated over many decades, and nobody really knows when or how most of that stuff got there or what it might be good for. When I was recently poking through Grandma's basement (metaphorically speaking, that is) I stumbled across the box labeled "Tuvan throat singing" and felt compelled to see what I could find on YouTube on this subject, and in fact found quite a bit of material there. A lot of what I found was clips of performances by a group called Huun Huur Tu.

But let's back up for a moment. Tuva is a small republic in southern Siberia that borders Mongolia. Part of the Tuvans' cultural heritage is a musical technique called throat singing, by which the singer produces multiple overtones simultaneously over a basis that is a sort of guttural drone. It's hard to describe; you need to hear it for yourself.

Fast-forward to one day last week, when I was browsing through the entertainment section of the morning paper. That's about the only section of the daily paper that I read on a regular basis, since much of what's in the regular news I've already heard on NPR or read online by the time I see it in the paper. I saw that Huun Huur Tu was going to be performing in Cambridge, MA, which is not far from where I live. One of my two new year's resolutions is to listen to more music (I'll tell you more on that topic some other time), so I thought it would be nice to leave the kids home and go see their concert with My Favorite Wife, i.e., just the two of us, since we just don't get out together as often as we should. Our kids are now at an age where they aren't all that interested in being dragged along with their parents everywhere anyway; the mere suggestion of a family outing now mostly results in an extended session of eye-rolling or worse.

I was pretty sure this was something that MFW would enjoy, but just as sure that if I told her we were going to see a Tuvan throat singing group, she would most likely assume I was dragging her to see some ridiculous stunt that was going to be amusing for about the first two minutes and then mostly just annoying after that, and the answer would be "no" right off. I seem to have a reputation around the house as having a sort of offbeat taste in music, and my judgment is often disregarded when selecting musical entertainment. So I just told her we were going to hear a style of music that she has probably never heard of but that she would like a lot. She was pretty skeptical, but agreed to go along.

Both kids were aware that we were going to a concert, but I didn't tell them what it was either because I didn't want the surprise spoiled. My daughter asked me, "Is this some really indie band?" Well, yes, I guess you could call it that.

As it turned out, MFW almost didn't go along because my son decided that day would be a good one for coming down with the flu. Here we can observe a certain divergence of parenting styles. When one of the kids gets sick, especially now that they are teenagers, I tend to follow the standard procedure of recommending plenty of rest and maybe some chicken soup unless the symptoms are something really extraordinary; MFW, on the other hand, generally assumes that any illness is terminal until proven otherwise. She thinks I take these things way too lightly, but I have been sent by MFW to the ER with one of the kids one time too many at 2 AM, only to have the doctor appear after hours of waiting to tell me that it was some really mundane bug, as I had more or less already assumed. So initially she announced that I would have to find someone else to take her ticket while she stayed home to comfort the suffering. I called up a few friends. One was genuinely interested but had a prior commitment; another was out of town. As for the rest, I explained what sort of concert I was proposing to attend and then there was silence on the other end of the phone, followed by a declination. Fortunately, as it turned out, Filius sustained a miraculous recovery after I administered the miracle drug Tylenol and a glass of water, and MFW then decided she would go along after all.

The remaining challenge was that MFW had another commitment she had to take care of before we left for the concert, meaning we would leave about an hour before the scheduled start of the show. It takes about half an hour to get to Cambridge from our house, so that wouldn't be a big deal if we were going anywhere but Cambridge. The problem is that the part of Cambridge we were going to, near the Harvard campus, is a crazy maze of one-way streets where finding a parking space is a pretty hit-or-miss affair. I absolutely dread driving there, especially for something like a concert that is going to start at a certain time whether I am there or not. You might find a spot in a few minutes or you might cruise around a half hour or more, by which time you will not only still be looking for a free space, but will also be hopelessly lost. The fact that the recent snowstorms have left enormous piles of snow everywhere and limited parking possibilities even further just added to my parking anxiety. But to my great surprise and relief the parking gods were gracious unto us, and we managed to get to the concert venue in plenty of time.

All I can tell you is that it was really worth the trouble. If you ever get a chance to see these guys, by all means do. They were amazingly accomplished musicians who put on a great show. So I will leave you now with a couple of samples of what I had the pleasure to experience live.

Huun Huur Tu: Chiraa-Khoor

Huun Huur Tu: Orphan's Lament

Psychic Friends Beware

I've been too busy lately to while away my time online. Poor blog, I'm so sorry to neglect you, but it turns out that once in a while I need to actually do some work in order to get paid. It's an understanding I have with my employer. What free time I have outside of work is mostly devoted to clearing away the seemingly endless snow that has hit the Northeast this winter.

But since the weekend is here I thought I should finally take a break to let you know that witchcraft is now an officially recognized profession in Romania. The new law that regulates this went into effect on January 1 of this year. The downside to this is that under the law, witches are now obligated to declare their earnings as practitioners of the profession and pay income taxes on their earnings, as well as to make contributions to the national health insurance and pension programs.

Apparently witches are not happy about this new taxation. Their attempt to combat it with magic appears to have failed so far, though, so maybe more conventional methods are called for. Why don't they start a Romanian version of the Tea Party? I would think that their former colleague Christine O'Donnell might be able to give them a few tips.


She turned me into a newt!

But that's not the end of it. If another new law currently being debated before parliament passes, Romanian witches will face fines or imprisonment if their predictions fail to come true. That actually seems like a reasonable idea to me. Given the challenges inherent in trying to outlaw stupidity, why not at least establish a standard of legal accountability for metaphysical malpractice?

Predictably, Romania's witches are less than enthusiastic about the proposed new law. Queen Witch Bratara Buzea (I'll bet you didn't even know there was such an office) says that it is the cards that should be blamed, not the witch operating them, if their predictions fail. Interesting logic; I'll have to try that. The next time one of my consulting projects threatens to run over budget, I will just tell the client that it is all my pencil's fault. "Here," I will say, handing it over with the most solemn look on my face that I can muster, "please punish it."

[Editor's note: This is the part of the writing process where My Favorite Wife usually walks over to my desk to see what I'm giggling about and then walks away, rolling her eyes, after realizing that I'm just sitting here laughing at my own jokes.]

Numbers Don't Lie (But They Sure Do Prevaricate)

My email inbox is the repository for a steady stream of messages forwarded to me by friends and relatives; stuff I clearly need to know about. Sometimes there are jokes, which I mostly enjoy and occasionally pass on to others. Sometimes there are inspirational or religious messages of one kind or another, which I could mostly live without; at this point in life, probably at (if not well beyond) the half-way point, I am about as inspired and/or religious as I am going to get.

There are also the "amazing facts" messages, such as the one claiming that Bob Keeshan (known better to me and millions of others who watched TV as small children in the early 1960's as Captain Kangaroo) and Lee Marvin (the actor) fought together during the battle for Iwo Jima in WWII, or the one stating that Fred Rogers ("Mr. Rogers", he of the sweater and hand puppets) was a former Navy Seal who had killed a couple dozen people in Vietnam. Actually, maybe that was all in the same email; I don't remember. But it doesn't matter, since all of those "facts" are basically anything but.

A variant of the "amazing facts" genre are the political messages. As far as I can recall, these are always from a conservative/Republican point of view. I would think there would be similar liberal/Democratic chain emails circulating on the net, but I don't think I've ever received one, if they are out there. A few of the political messages I get are of the "throw the bastards out" variety, more or less targeted at politicians in general and not at any particular party, or, once in a great while, at entities such as "Wall Street" or "big business". But the vast majority of them are attacks on Democratic policies and/or leaders that are based on some very creative interpretations of facts.

It kind of pains me to get these messages from intelligent adults. I would be embarrassed to pass on some outlandish-sounding piece of information without first checking and double-checking it. When I get one of these "amazing facts" messages (political or non-political) my standard response is to head for Google to see what I can find out, preferably from as many sources as possible. I look at the standard sites for that sort of thing, like Snopes.com and Factcheck.org, but if it's a political message, I also try to find mention of it at conservative-leaning sites like Foxnews.com as well (I'm a "fair and balanced" kind of guy). But I do so knowing what I'm probably going to find. There is the old adage, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." The corollary to that is that if it sounds too outrageous to be true, you are probably a fool to take it at face value.

The biggest alarm bell goes off in my head when I get a message describing how the axis of evil (Pelosi/Reid/Obama) is plotting some wickedness that will cause a world of pain to senior citizens. Anyone who follows politics even a little must surely be aware that the one segment of the electorate that consistently heads to the polls in large numbers on election day is (drum roll, cymbal crash)… senior citizens. So why would a politician of any political persuasion specifically single out older people to bear the brunt of the negative effects of some new policy? It just makes no sense.

In the past couple of days I received two forwarded political messages of the sort that is just screaming for fact-checking. What sort of sets them apart is that they use a lot of numbers to make their case. There they are, in black and white, the numbers, and they don't lie, right?

Well, maybe that's not exactly the case, on either count. First of all, I don't know what it is about these political chain emails, but they're often in anything but black and white. The text is very often in two or three different colors, in multiple typefaces and sizes. They look like they were composed by someone who only just discovered that his PC can do this and wants to exploit that capability to the fullest; if "less is more" then I guess that more must be waaaaaaaaaaay more. Even the ones that don't contain a random mix of formatting often insist on presenting their case in gigantic type, for some reason. I guess it's the written equivalent of shouting at someone who doesn't speak your language on the theory that this will somehow make him understand you better.

But second, and more importantly, numbers often do lie. Or to be more precise, they only tell part of the story or get misquoted. I give you therefore the aforementioned two email messages that arrived this week.

Message number one is reproduced below approximately as it arrived in my inbox.

It looks like someone actually read the “Change” in store for all of us??? Maybe 2012 will get us back on the right track??

Did you know that if you sell your house after 2012 you will pay a 3.8% sales tax on it?  That's $3,800 on a $100,000 home etc.

When did this happen? It's in the health care bill. Just thought you should know.

SALES TAX TO GO INTO EFFECT 2013 (Part of HC Bill)

 REAL ESTATE SALES TAX

So, this is "change you can believe in"?

Under the new health care bill - did you know that all real estate transactions will be subject to a 3.8% Sales Tax?  The bulk of these new taxes don't kick in until 2013 if you sell your $400,000 home, there will be a $15,200 tax.  This bill is set toscrew the retiring generation who often downsize their homes. Does this stuff make your November 2012 vote more important?

Oh, you weren't aware this was in the ObamaCare bill? Guess what, you aren't alone. There are more than a few members of Congress that aren't aware of it either. 

http://www.gop.gov/blog/10/04/08/obamacare-flatlines-obamacare-taxes-home 

Why am I sending you this?  The same reason I hope you forward this to every single person in your address bookbecause you can make a difference.

Huh! Obama is going toscrew <sic> the retiring generation! That doesn't seem like a good move for such a wily politician. I must know more. It sure would be helpful if that message referred to the part of the health care bill that imposes this outrageous burden on the elderly, but it doesn't, which is par for the course with this genre of messages. So I looked at various web sites to see what I could find.

What I learned is that first of all, there is a 3.8% tax imposed by the bill, but it's not a sales tax on real estate, it's an amendment to the tax code that creates a new Medicare tax on capital gains. A capital gain is the difference between what you paid for a capital asset (e.g. a share of stock, or a piece of real estate) and what you later receive when you sell it, i.e., it's the profit on the sale. The part of the bill that imposes this new tax is section 1402. I read it and I will be the first to admit that it is massively confusing to a mere mortal such as myself, but I can at least assure you that neither the term "sales tax" nor any reference to "real estate" appear anywhere in the text, meaning that whoever wrote that message didn't spend a whole lot of effort on research.

Let's dissect some of that. Note that this is a Medicare tax. Previously, capital gains were not even subject to Medicare taxes. Now they are. But they are only subject to the tax if your income exceeds $200,000 per year (individuals) or $250,000 (couples filing jointly). That's about 5% of all taxpayers, according to this article. And in the event you do fall into that category, you're going to give Uncle Sam 3.8% of the profit on the sale, not the total sale amount. Suppose you sold that house mentioned in the message for $400,000, but you paid $300,000 for it; your tax would be $3,800, not $15,200. But that's only if that house was not your primary residence, e.g. it was a vacation home. If it was your primary residence, the profit would fall under an additional exemption of $250,000 (individuals) or $500,000 (couples filing jointly), so you wouldn't owe anything at all.

Disclaimer: I am not a CPA, tax attorney or anything like that, so don't take my analysis at face value; do your own research (here's one good place to start). I'm just a guy who can read. And I can tell you that what I'm reading says that there's a gigantic gap between what's in that message and what the law really says. 

Let's look at that second message. This one's not as colorful, but I sure don't need to put on my glasses to read it.

CLUNKER MATH
The person who calculated this bit of information has been a professor at The University of West Virginia in Morgantown,  West Virginia for the last forty some years.
A clunker that travels  12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year.
A vehicle  that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons of gas a  year.
So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce gasoline  consumption by 320 gallons per year.
The government claims 700,000 clunkers  have been replaced so that’s 224 million gallons saved per year.
That  equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.  5 million barrels is  about 5 hours worth of US consumption.
More importantly, 5 million barrels  of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars.
So, the  government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million.
We  spent $8.57 for every $1.00 we saved.

I’m pretty sure they will  do a better job with our health care, though......

This thing is an exercise in misinformation and fallacious reasoning. It applies a technique that I see in a lot of these messages, i.e., naming some authority figure that I guess is supposed to impress me (here it's a gen-u-wine perfesser—I wonder if he also has a name, and what he is a professor of—presumably it's not accounting). But let's do the math ourselves.

To produce one gallon of gasoline, the amount of crude oil you need varies depending on things like the grade of oil you are starting out with and the efficiency of the refining equipment and process you are using. According to the US Energy Information Administration, one barrel of oil (=42 US gallons) produces 19-21 gallons of gasoline. So let's be generous and say that we can get 21 gallons of gas from a barrel of oil, which is equivalent to saying that producing a gallon of gas requires two gallons of oil. If we saved 224 million gallons of gas per year, that means we saved 448 million gallons or about 10,666,667 barrels of oil (not "a bit over 5 million"—our anonymous professor doesn't seem to know the difference between gasoline and petroleum, so I guess he's not a professor of chemistry or geology, either). So if oil is $70/barrel, we saved $746,666,690 in the first year.

Notice that I said "in the first year". Our professor apparently assumes that all of those cars are going to be on the road for exactly one more year. Well, I drive a car that would have qualified for "Cash for Clunkers", and I'm still driving it, and I will probably continue driving it until it more or less falls apart. So I'll bet those cars that did get traded in under the program would have been on the road for another 3-5 years, meaning the total reduction in oil consumption is on the order of 32.0–53.3 million barrels or, at $70 barrel, $2.24–$3.73 billion.

But why use $70/barrel? As I write this, the price of a barrel of "light sweet" crude oil (the kind that's especially good for making gasoline) is around $90/barrel. That values our savings at about $2.88–$4.80 billion. Now, I'm ignoring adjustments for things like the "time value of money" and other such book-lernin' I got in that thar fancy college I went to, but suddenly this doesn't look like such a bad return on the $3 billion investment after all, especially when I consider that forecasts like this one don't foresee falling oil prices any time soon.

That "Cash for Clunkers" message also ignores the other beneficial effects of the program. The reduction in oil consumption implies a reduction in pollution, which in turn means a reduction in costs associated therewith (costs of pollution-related health problems, for example). And the program probably also kept one or two jobs in the automotive industry going longer than they otherwise would have. Those benefits play no role in our professor's analysis.

So what do we learn from this? Caveat lector, I guess. Believe what you want, but at least do the math first.